But, despite the overwhelmingly cynical national dialogue on immigration reform, there remain individuals and groups who insist on treating immigrants and the issue of reform with reason and respect.

One of those groups is the African American Ministers Leadership Council, a project of PFAW Foundation. On Cinco de Mayo, several representatives of AAMLC gathered on Ellis Island to sign a multi-faith covenant calling for honesty, respect and dignity in the conversation about immigration reform—and promising that they would follow those principles in their outreach to their own faith communities.

Police chiefs from several major US cities said today that Arizona’s harsh new anti-immigrant law will make it harder for law enforcement officers to do their jobs:

The new Arizona law will intimidate crime victims and witnesses who are illegal immigrants and divert police from investigating more serious crimes, chiefs from Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia said. They will join their counterparts from Montgomery County and a half-dozen other U.S. cities in meeting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday morning to discuss the measure.

"This is not a law that increases public safety. This is a bill that makes it much harder for us to do our jobs," Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. "Crime will go up if this becomes law in Arizona or in any other state."

This isn’t a surprise. Phoenix’s police chief has already come out against the new law, saying it “adds new problems for local law enforcement.” But the fact that more police chiefs are speaking out against Arizona’s law reflects the serious threat that as many as 15 states may pass laws similar to Arizona’s. It’s scary that the right-wing rhetoric surrounding immigration reform has begun to drown out the voices of the people in charge of keeping our cities safe…and it’s further proof that the Right Wing is more interested in creating a clamor than actually fixing the problem.

The New York Times ran a powerful editorial today on the stark contrast between the courage of activists fighting for fair and comprehensive immigration reform and the somewhat less courageous behavior of those in power in Washington.

They highlight the story of four students—three of them undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children— who were arrested Monday for staging a sit-in in Sen. John McCain’s Tucson office to advocate for the DREAM Act.

Who else has shown such courage in the long struggle for immigration reform? Not Mr. McCain, who ditched his principled support of rational immigration legislation to better his odds in a close re-election campaign against a far-right-wing opponent. Not President Obama, who has retreated to lip service and vagueness in his calls for reform. Not his administration. The Justice Department has stood by as a civil-rights coalition — the American Civil Liberties Union, Maldef, the N.A.A.C.P., the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and others — has swiftly sued to block the Arizona law.

Other supposed defenders of immigrants, Democrats in Congress, have lost their voices. Senators Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez and Harry Reid, mindful of November elections and frustrated Latino voters, have unveiled a blueprint for immigration reform that parrots Republican talking points about clamping down the southern border and treating the undocumented as a swelling tide of criminals.

Good immigration reform needs a good bill, and the administration and the president and Democratic leaders haven’t yet offered or convincingly fought for one. The fight for reform is stalled. It could be simple acts of protest that ignite a fire. Half a century ago it was young people, at lunch counters and aboard buses across the South, who help galvanize the movement for civil rights, and to waken more powerful elders to injustice.

Back in January, Republican pollster and communications strategist Frank Luntz distributed a strategy memo instructing Republican officials how to obstruct Wall Street reform while confusing the American public about who was looking out for their interests. Among Luntz's key recommendations was to tie reforms to big bank bailouts. There's the 180 degree spin from reality. One of the key goals of Wall Street reform legislation being considered in both houses of Congress is preventing the need for such bailouts by clamping down on the kind of overly risky behavior that led to the financial system meltdown. The legislation has been designed to create mechanisms to shut down failing institutions in an orderly way to prevent the need for expensive improvised bailouts in the future.

So, to be clear, the purpose of the Bailout Lie was to let Republicans get away with stopping reforms that would crimp the style of Wall Street speculators while at the same time convincing tea party activists and Main Street Americans that it was somehow the Democrats doing Wall Street's bidding. That's a big bluff. But Senator McConnell is nothing if not audacious in putting the Bailout Lie to work.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll this week showed that a majority of Americans, including over a third of Republicans, actually back the legislation’s so-called “bailout” provision—a requirement that banks contribute to a fund that would cover the cost of taking over and breaking up any failing financial institutions. Two-thirds of those surveyed supported the bill’s increased regulation of Wall Street.

While the GOP’s Wall Street Reform talking points are clearly reaching Republican Senators, it’s unclear how much of an effect they’ll have on a public that’s fed up with the current lax oversight of the financial industry. Perhaps it’s time GOP Senators started consulting their constituents before their party’s spin doctors.

John Perr wrote what I consider a must-read post over at Crooks and Liars about how Republicans, when in power, fail miserably at governing and seem to do their best art destroying our country. The results of their policies -- economic or otherwise -- inevitably force them out of office, but last long enough that they are able to pin the woes on their democratic successors and make "Government" the scapegoat for all the nation's problems, with particular anger being directed at the then-incumbents: Democrats.

That Americans' trust in government has plummeted to near-record lows isn't a surprise. After all, as the Pew Research Center documented, distrust of Washington is an American tradition, one which tends to rise and fall inversely with the economy. But the spike in anger towards the federal government, a fury which doubled to 21% since 2000, points to a potential midterm bonanza for the GOP. All of which suggests that the Republican Party whose anti-government rhetoric and incompetence in office helped kill trust in government may now be rewarded for it.

By now, the Republican recipe for badmouthing government into power should be all too familiar. First is to endlessly insist that, as Ronald Reagan famously said, "Government is the problem." Second is the self-fulfilling prophecy of bad government under Republican leadership, as the Bush recessions of 1991 and 2007, the Hurricane Katrina response, the Iraq catastrophe and the transfer of federal oversight powers to the industries being regulated all showed. Third, when the backlash from the American people inevitably comes as it did in 1992 and 2008, attack the very legitimacy of the new Democratic president they elected. Fourth, turn to the filibuster and other obstructionist tactics to block the Democratic agenda, inaction for which the incumbent majoirty will be blamed. Last, target the institutions and programs (Social Security, Medicare, the IRS) which form the underpinnings of progressive government.

Maybe the Right Wing is finally realizing that after Citizens United, “judicial activism” just doesn’t cut it for slamming judicial nominees who aren’t willing to overturn a century of settled campaign finance law. So they’re trotting out a brand new talking point to fill the void: “outcome based” judging.

As part of that effort, Republicans beginning this week will look to use some of Obama’s previous lower court picks — particularly the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit — as adhering to a liberal, “outcomes-based” philosophy rather than a constitutionalist approach.

Yes, “outcome based” is just the latest in a long line of virtually meaningless epithets aimed at any judicial nominee who disagrees with the gospel according to Robert Bork.

Is there a debate to be had between different philosophies towards applying the Constitution? Sure. Justice Scalia and Justice Breyer have it all the time. But this isn’t it. In the upcoming confirmation process for Justice Stevens’s successor, the American people deserve a conversation about the Court and the role it plays in the lives of ordinary people. Unfortunately, it seems like the GOP is planning the same warmed-over sound bytes we’ve been getting for years.

A few minutes ago, the House of Representatives passed landmark health reform, perhaps the most important piece of domestic policy legislation in a generation.

The feat is all the more impressive given the scorchedearth tactics the Right Wing has used to try to derail it. Even yesterday, Democratic Congressmen faced racist and homophobic slurs for supporting the legislation, and this evening Congressman Bart Stupak (no friend to a woman's constitutional right to reproductive choice) was called a "baby killer" by a Republican Representative for supporting the bill.

But in the end, health care reform passed: a major accomplishment for Congress and an important plank of President Obama's platform realized.

The moral: standing up for your agenda pays off. The GOP made clear that there was virtually nothing they wouldn't do to stop reform, but by powering through Republican obstruction, Democrats were able to score a major win for themselves and for the American people.

Right Wing leaders have attempted to distance themselves from the incidents, but their denials would be more convincing if inflaming racial resentment weren't such a central strategy in their campaign against President Obama and his agenda.

At first glance, health care reform would not seem as likely an issue for racial wedge politics. But racially charged arguments have been made alongside the by-now familiar charges of government takeovers, socialism, fascism, and death panels. Investors Business Daily and Fox Nation teamed up to portray health care reform as "affirmative action on steroids" and to suggest that reform is actually a back-door way to implement reparations for slavery:

The racial grievance industry under health care reform could be calling the shots in the emergency room, the operating room, the medical room, even medical school. As Terence Jeffrey, editor at large of Human Events puts it, not only our wealth, but also our health will be redistributed.

At the recent How to Take Back America conference organized by far-right doyenne Phyllis Schlafly and her heir-apparent,right-wing radio host and activist Janet Folger Porter, a panelist attacked health care reform saying it would amount to a reenactment of slavery by our first black president, this time with doctors being enslaved. Bishop Harry Jackson, the Religious Right's favorite African American minister, has denounced health care reform proposals that he claims would divert health care resources from wealthier to poorer Americans as "reverse classism."

Two academics, Marc Hetherington of Vanderbilt University and Jonathan Weiler of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently found an "extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform," a relationship that did not exist during the Clinton health care debate.

If the GOP and the Right Wing want to be able to credibly disavow racism, they should stop associating so closely with those who peddle it.

The good news is that the Senate Judiciary Committee voted this morning to approve - again - Dawn Johnsen's nomination to head the Office of Legal Counsel. The bad news is that this was yet another party-line vote where the Republicans opposed an unquestionably qualified candidate solely because she was nominated by President Obama.

People For the American Way has carefully documented the unprecedented behavior of Congressional Republicans, as they have done everything in their power to stymie President Obama's nominations and administration-supported initiatives even if they have overwhelming support within their own caucus. Just this week, for instance, Republicans filibustered the nomination of Judge Barbara Keenan to the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, after every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee had voted in support of her nomination. When the filibuster was broken, she was confirmed 99-0. 99-0!

How do you explain a party whose position on more and more issues is determined simply on whether they can hurt President Obama, even when they agree with him?

If you consider today's GOP as a traditional political party in the mold of other political parties throughout American history, their behavior is surprising. But this is the party that impeached President Clinton, shut down the 2000 Florida recount, and launched vast voter disenfranchisement campaigns around the country.

So just what is today's GOP? Just six weeks after President Obama's inauguration, our affiliate People For the American Way Foundation foresaw the next step in the party's devolution in a powerful and prescient Right Wing Watch In Focus report: Dragged along by its most extreme base, today's Republican Party does not see itself as the minority party in a democracy. Instead, they increasingly see themselves as a resistance movement, a mindset appropriate for fighting a dictatorship, but not for working with a democracy's freely elected government.

No one who read that report has been at all surprised by the GOP efforts to sabotage the workings of the federal government. They made it clear over a year ago how they envision themselves in a nation that rejected them at the ballot box. Their behavior since has been consistent.

It's sad that the party of Abraham Lincoln has sunk so low.

And it's outrageous that qualified nominees are being blocked by the GOP's obstructionist tactics. Help put a stop to it here.

On Saturday, Annise Parker was elected mayor of Houston. This makes Houston, the fourth largest city in the country, the largest municipality in America to have elected an openly gay mayor.

Of course, the right wing has never met an openly gay person they didn’t want to dehumanize, so Rick Scarborough, along with other figures from the anti-gay movement, decided to step in and attack Parker by sharing his copy of the “homosexual agenda.” Via Right Wing Watch:

1. Legalize same sex marriage.

2. Mandate public acceptance of the homosexual activities.

3. Teach homosexuality to school children, starting in kindergarten, as an acceptable, alternative lifestyle. This is known as multisexualism. This enables homosexuals to recruit children to their lifestyle.

4. Lower or remove age of consent laws leading to relaxation of laws prohibiting pedophilia. See www.nambla.org /

5. Elevate homosexuals to a minority class, leading to affirmative action for homosexuals in the workplace. Cross dressers could force employers to accept their actions at work.

6. Prohibit any speech which opposes homosexual activity. This would be considered “hate speech” and have criminal sanctions. This would destroy 1st Amendment free speech rights for those who oppose homosexual conduct and the homosexual political movement.

7. Require employee benefits to be provided to same sex partners.

8. Elect candidates to office who will work to implement the homosexual agenda.

Unfortunately for Scarborough, the voters of Houston decided to evaluate the candidates on the decidedly less salacious issues of crime, taxes, and development policy. How boring.

So congratulations to Parker and to all the voters of Houston!

And we hope that Scarborough is enjoying the view from the dustbin of history.

In case you had somehow overlooked it, today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” the scientific landmark that reshaped the way we see the natural world—and which religious extremists rail about to this day.

People For the American Way Foundation has a long history of opposing religious belief being taught as fact in public schools, and we’ve worked hard to defend classrooms against religious doctrine dressed up as science.

To learn more about the many ways creationists have tried to push Darwin out of public schools, check out our Creationism Timeline as well as Right Wing Watch’s coverage of creationism. And don’t forget to raise your glass tonight to wish “On the Origin of Species” a very happy birthday.

Surely we have a lot of fighting left to do, but it’s encouraging that the Senate has introduced a health care bill without the Stupak-Pitts anti-choice amendment, which passed in the House. There’s no doubt that the right-wing will attack this bill, and work fervently to get the anti-choice language into this bill. This summer, People For the American Way alerted you that the right wing was fanning the flames on abortion:

Religious Right leaders have enthusiastically joined Republican-led opposition to health care reform efforts.

Much of the Religious Right’s organizing energy has been devoted to incendiary and false claims about the administration’s alleged stealth plan to force every health plan to cover - and force all doctors to provide - abortion services. None of these approaches are actually included in the plans working their way through Congress. In fact, anti-choice members of Congress are using health reform to institute a new nationwide abortion ban in private insurance plans taking away coverage women already have.

And guess what’s happened… By now you know that the House recently passed a health care reform bill with the Stupak-Pitts amendment. As you’ve read here before, the Stupak-Pitts amendment prohibits private insurance companies participating in the new health care system (which will be created by the bill) from covering abortion services. Translation: private insurance companies that individuals pay to provide quality health care with their own money cannot provide the option of abortion coverage.

The right wing is already out in force on this. They’ll be lobbying members of Congress and talking to their allies at Fox News, The Washington Times, and news sources across the country spreading lies and misinformation. Our representatives need to hear from us, and know that this is unacceptable. Earlier this week, NARAL and People For the American Way delivered more than 97,000 petitions to Sen. Harry Reid’s office, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. More than 97,000 of you have spoken up and called for Sen. Reid to reject the anti-choice language to this bill. Now it’s up to us to make sure it stays this way.

With right wing candidates winning both Virginia and New Jersey's gubernatorial elections, the Far Right is gleefully portraying these victories as a national repudiation of President Obama - and a foreshadowing of crushing defeats for progressives in 2010.

But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that's nonsense.

Go back eight years, to when George W. Bush was in his first year of office like Obama is today. In November of 2001, Democratic gubernatorial candidates in both Virginia and New Jersey handily won their elections, shifting party control of the governor's mansion in both states. What did this tell us about GOP weakness in the next year's midterms?

Not much.

The same month that Democrats won in Virginia and New Jersey, Bush was at the height of his popularity, scoring approval ratings in the mid-to-high 80s. And in the 2002 midterms, he parlayed that popularity into stunning successes for the Republicans in both the Senate and the House.

Last week we mentioned the anti-Muslim witch hunt that some members of Congress wanted to start against, of all people, Congressional interns.

And yesterday People For President Michael B. Keegan wrote about the chilling resurgance of McCarthy-like tactics coming from the Right Wing.

But we'd be remiss in failing to point out another Congressman standing up for religious liberty and against anti-Muslim bigotry. Representative Keith Ellison, himself the first Muslim-American member of Congress, took to the floor of the House to read a statement from the Congressional Tri Caucus. The statement made clear that people of all races and religions are welcome in the halls of Congress.

You can read the statement and watch a video of Rep. Ellison's remarks here.

Congressman Ellison and all the members of the Tri Caucus, we salute you! Thanks for standing up for religious liberty for all.

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Maryland v. Shatzer, a case involving the constitutional right to counsel during police questioning. The questions asked by the Justices – even the most conservative of them – exposed one of the great lies the Far Right tells about our nation’s judiciary: that courts should not make policy.

In 1981, the Court held that once you tell the police that you want your lawyer, the questioning must stop either until your lawyer arrives, or you yourself initiate further communication. This rule protects you from being badgered by the police to change your mind before the lawyer shows up.

In 2003, after Michael Blaine Shatzer asked for a lawyer, the police dropped their investigation and released him from their custody. Three years later, new evidence arose in the case. The rule established in 1981 would suggest that the police were still barred from questioning Shatzer. That was the issue before the Court this week. To help them analyze the case, the Justices asked the sorts of hypothetical questions they often ask. The Washington Postreports:

Justices seemed generally supportive … that police should have been allowed to question Shatzer again, but they had a hard time agreeing on how the rule should be changed.

[Chief Justice] Roberts worried that police could repeatedly question and dismiss a suspect who asks for a lawyer. "You know, just sort of catch-and-release, until he finally breaks down and says, 'All right, I'll talk,' " Roberts said. ...

[T]he justices wondered what could be done about a suspect who asks for a lawyer, never actually receives one or is convicted, and then is questioned years later, perhaps for a different crime.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. posed this hypothetical: What if someone was arrested for joy riding in Maryland, invoked his Fifth Amendment protection, and was never convicted? Could police in Montana question him as a murder suspect in Montana 10 years later?

When [Shatzer’s attorney] said no, Alito replied: "And you don't think that's a ridiculous application of the rule?"

[Then] Alito raised the hypothetical ante to a crime committed 40 years later ...

If the police let a suspect go after he asks for a lawyer, does the Constitution prohibit the police from questioning him again half a century later? Should there be limits? What should they be? How do you decide?

The Justices deciding this case are not simply calling balls and strikes, the insulting umpire analogy that Roberts infamously used during his confirmation hearings. Roberts, Alito, and the other Justices are weighing the consequences of different possible interpretations of the 1981 precedent as they apply it to a new and unforeseen situation.

Just as legislators do, they will be making policy. And that's fine. That's what courts are supposed to do. It's inherent in interpreting the law in difficult cases such as this.

So the next time the Washington Post quotes a right wing propagandist condemning progressive judges for making policy or "legislating from the bench," perhaps the Post will do more than collaborate by simply reprinting the accusation. Perhaps the Post will cite its own reporting and point out that all judges weigh policies and make law, but that the Far Right is silent when conservative judges do it.

Last night, in a 178-234 vote, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act moved one step closer to becoming law. This legislation protects victims of hate crimes based on disability, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.

The vote was taken on what's called a motion to instruct conferees - this one would have instructed those negotiating a final Defense Authorization bill to remove the hate crimes language included by the Senate. In a series of speeches (item 35) fit only for Right Wing Watch, the motion's supporters tried to take down this critical update to "equal protection under the law." Thankfully, their efforts were to no avail, and the Shepard/Byrd bill may soon reach President Obama's desk. A few minor hurdles remain, but we hope to see it signed within the next week.

With the stroke of a pen, the President will have an opportunity to send loud and clear the message that freedom from discrimination is a right all Americans should enjoy. And we cannot forget that this action would affirm - for the first time in federal law - a positive protection for gender identity.

Click here for more information from People For the American Way and African American Ministers in Action.

The Right Wing smear machine has been in overdrive attacking Kevin Jennings, who heads the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. But the education community is having none of it.

Gerald Tirozzi of the National Association of Secondary School Principles appeared on CNN last night to praise Jennings as "a powerful voice to continualy help us not to back away from doing the right things for kids in our schools."

President Obama recently nominated Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She'll be the first openly gay person to hold that post.

Feldblum, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, previously served as legislative counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she played a role in the drafting of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

"She has also worked on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights" and "been a leading expert on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act," according to a biography released by the White House.

Her degrees are from Harvard Law School and Barnard College, and she went on to clerk for Judge Frank Coffin on the First Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, historian and journalist Rick Perlstein offers up an insightful historical perspective on the teabaggers, birthers, and deathers who’ve been thrust to the forefront by the media, claiming to speak for all Americans in opposition to everything from health care reform to President Obama’s citizenship.

One parallel: When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, opponents said that it would “enslave” whites. Those claims don’t sound much nuttier than the allegations that a health care provision to help senior citizens who want to write a living will would actually have created “death panels.”

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America's nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles -- instead of long-range bombers -- and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. Thousands of delegates from 90 cities packed a National Indignation Convention in Dallas, a 1961 version of today's tea parties; a keynote speaker turned to the master of ceremonies after his introduction and remarked as the audience roared: "Tom Anderson here has turned moderate! All he wants to do is impeach [Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl] Warren. I'm for hanging him!"

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

We’ve all heard the saying that history repeats itself. Perlstein’s analysis is, without a doubt, a must read.

AAMIA and PFAW have submitted lettersin support of the legislation, along with a fact sheet on the legislation, and myths and facts about hate crimes protections. AAMIA and PFAW have been out in front combating the lies from the right wing that this bill will silence pastors who speak out against homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

While they were at the hearing AAMIA staff and Rev. Joseph Smith caught up with author, playwright and producer Janet Langhart Cohen, a witness before the committee, and learned more about her Anne & Emmett Project, a play about a beyond-the-grave conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till. The play was scheduled to premiere at the US Holocaust Museum the week of the unfortunate tragedy at the museum where Officer Stephen Johns was killed in the line of duty by an avowed white supremacist.